Kartar Dhillon

Kartar Kaur Dhillon (ਕਰਤਾਰ ਕੌਰ ਢਿੱਲੋਂ) was a Punjabi Sikh American political activist and writer from California.

Dhillon grew up in the Ghadar Party, working to end British colonialism in India.

As an activist, she supported unions, the Black Panther Party, farm workers, political prisoners, and the Korean reunification movement.

Her father, Bakshish Singh Dhillon was one of the first Punjabi Sikh pioneers to arrive in the United States in 1897, with her mother, Rattan Kaur joining him in 1910.

Kartar Dhillon was the fourth child out of the total eight in the family.

At the time she was born, their family was the only South Asian family in Simi Valley.

From 1916 to 1922, she and her family lived in Astoria, Oregon, where she and her siblings attended school and her father worked at a lumber mill.

As a part of the war effort, Dhillon worked as a machinist and truck driver from the Marine Corps.

Her youngest brother, Hari, also volunteered for the Marine Corps and was killed in action in Okinawa in 1945 at the age of 18.

She picked crops, worked as a waitress, and was the secretary for the San Francisco, Teamsters and Abestos Worker's unions.

She retired in 1983.

Her writing included "The Parrot's Beak," an autobiographical essay about her early life published in Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings By and About Asian American Women.

In 1994, at age 80, Dhillon founded the Chaat Collective, a South Asian American art and performance collective.

She died on June 15, 2008, in Berkeley, California.

She is survived by two children, nine grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.